Lenovo announces Haswell ThinkPads and a really, really wide monitor

"17 hour battery life" and a 21:9 monitor top the list of today's announcements.

It's IFA week in Berlin, and that means that most of the major PC and phone makers are gearing up to announce their new products for the fall. Not all of these are going to make it to the US, but the things you see at IFA should be indicative of the products you'll be able to buy when the holiday season rolls around. Lenovo is kicking things off for us with a number of ThinkPad announcements—the new laptops are getting Haswell, but they still retain that classic ThinkPad look, right down to the red TrackPoint nub embedded in their keyboards. Let's take a quick look.

First up are the T440 and its slightly higher-end cousin, the T440s. Both include 14-inch screens (with touch as an optional feature), "up to" Haswell-based Core i5 processors with Intel's integrated HD 4400 GPU (dedicated GPUs aren't available in North America), support for up to 12GB of DDR3L, either mechanical hard drives or solid-state drives (in capacities up to 1TB and 512GB, respectively), and "up to" 17 hours of battery life when equipped with a high-capacity battery.

There are three major differences between the two models: screen resolution (the T440s goes up to 1080p, and the T440 tops out at 1600×900), weight (3.5 pounds for the T440s versus 4.0 for the T440), and price (the T440 starts at $899 and the T440s starts at $1,149). The precise specs of these base models weren't announced, but we'll probably find out more by the time they launch at the end of October.

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The ThinkPad T440s is the slightly higher-end version of the laptop.

Lenovo

The ThinkPad T440s is the slightly higher-end version of the laptop.

Lenovo

With an extended battery, both the T440 and T440s can get "up to" 17 hours of battery life.

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The T440s includes three USB 3.0 ports (two are on the left side) and a mini DisplayPort out.

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The third USB port, a gigabit Ethernet port, and a dinosaur of a VGA port all show up on the laptop's right side.

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The T440's plastic has a slightly rougher look to it than the T440s'.

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Otherwise the two laptops are fairly similar. Touchscreens and cellular connectivity are available options for both.

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However, there's only one USB port on each side (for a total of two).

The X240 is the thin-and-light option, and while it offers a smaller 12.5-inch screen, it can also be configured with a 1080p display (1366×768 is also available, and touch is optional at either resolution). The laptop weighs 2.94 pounds and is 0.79 inches thick. It includes "up to" Haswell Core i7 CPUs paired with Intel HD 4400 GPUs, up to 8GB of RAM, and both HDD and SSD options. Lenovo promises more than ten hours of battery life with the six-cell travel battery attached, but it doesn't list an estimate for the standard three-cell battery (assuming the capacity increases linearly, expect about five hours). The X240 will run you at least $1,099 when it is released at the end of October.

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The X240 is in many ways a miniature version of the T440s.

Lenovo

The X240 is in many ways a miniature version of the T440s.

Lenovo

That's true right down to the VGA port. The laptop also offers HDMI out and two USB 3.0 ports.

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As in the T440-series laptops, features like cellular connectivity and touch are optional.

The T- and X- series ThinkPads are Lenovo's flagship business laptops, but new models in the more wallet-friendly S series are also being announced today. The 14-inch ThinkPad S440 and 15-inch S540 are similar in many specifications: both come with "up to" Haswell-based Core i7 CPUs and Intel's HD 4400 GPU by default, but they can be upgraded to a dedicated AMD Radeon HD 8670M with 2GB of graphics memory. The larger S540 is usually offered with slightly higher-end options than the S440: its two RAM slots support up to 16GB of DDR3 (one slot and 8GB of RAM for the S440), it will take up to a 1TB HDD or a 512GB SSD (500GB and 256GB for the S440), and the S540 is rated for "up to" nine hours of battery life (six for the S440). The S540 also includes a 1080p display option, while the S440 tops out at 1600×900.

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The S440 (pictured) and S540 are slightly less boxy than their T-series counterparts.

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The S440 (pictured) and S540 are slightly less boxy than their T-series counterparts.

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Both include two USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, and a gigabit Ethernet port.

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Touchscreens are available in both models, but the addition adds significantly to the laptops' weight.

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The S540 is similar in style, but larger in size. There's also room for a number pad.

The S540 can also come with more RAM and larger drives than the S440.

Both models can be configured with a touchscreen, but the addition adds significantly to their weights: the S440 goes from 3.92 pounds without touch to 4.23 pounds with it, and the S540 goes from 4.65 pounds to a hefty 5.2 pounds. These models are destined for Europe first if the pricing is any indication—the S440 launches in September and starts at €699, and the S540 will start for €649 in October. No word on when (or if) they'll reach North American shores.

Lenovo's final announcement for the day is a monitor, the 29-inch ThinkVision LT2934z. The display has the ThinkVision line's healthy complement of ports (one VGA, one HDMI, one MHL, one DVI-D, one DisplayPort, two USB 3.0 ports, and two USB 2.0 ports), but its real claim to fame is its super-wide 21:9 aspect ratio.

Monitors with 16:9 ratios are far more common, but this isn't the first time we've seen 21:9—it also cropped up in Toshiba's Satellite 845W and in monitors from LG, Dell, and a few others. At 2560×1080, the screen has as many vertical pixels as a more common 1920×1080 monitor, but enough extra horizontal pixels that fitting two or three windows side-by-side comfortably shouldn't be a problem. Like other 21:9 monitors, the LT2934z doesn't come cheap: it will run you $799 when it launches in October.

Kind of odd to see the T440 being under-spec'ed versus the 440s. That's going to upset a few ThinkPad faithful.

That said, the T line has been kind of abused as of late; it's gotten oddballs like the T430u and 431s that break compatibility with the hardware ecosystem, while the traditional Ts haven't been as well-built or as well spec'ed. The X series has suffered a similar lack of focus and a proliferation of models (a ChromeBook, a couple tabletish devices, a few UltraBooks, the FrankenHelix) while the traditional (X230) has kind of sat.

I replaced my T61p with a W530 because I couldn't quite get the T-Series I wanted, and I know we scuttled a buy of new X230s because they didn't make sense. I think Lenovo needs to be really careful, here.

No T540 or W models at all? I'd have expected IFA to launch the W models...them or NAB, I suppose.

And DEATH to that STUPID trackpad they've started using. I have one on my Helix, and every. freaking. time. I go to use it, it infuriates me, and gets me thinking about transplanting the model from my T530.

At least give me physical buttons for the trackpoint! You can't even control click on it without frustration!

Edit to add: My T530 was from the launch, when the T and W lines were able to specced identically. Essentially, it's a W530 labeled as a T. Same GPU, RAM, screen, etc that you can now only get on the W530.

What happened to the mouse buttons!? These laptops can't call themselves proper workstation laptops without a physical left and right mouse button. A larger trackpad might help grandma but a user accustomed to acceleration doesn't need it.

There doesn't appear to be anything to distinguish these from an acer or any other middling chinese laptop, which is really unfortunate.

What lunatic in their right mind would buy a single 2560x1080 panel when they could buy two 1920x1080 panels and rotate them 90? Like someone else said before, you'd likely benefit much more from height than width.

Because we all know full well that Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all use so much horizontal real estate.

I am glad to finally see a refresh to the X230, but a little bummed that it's so meh. I guess though Lenovo has been going down this route for a while now. Still not a horrible machine by any means, but not the same Road Warrior Approved X-series 12-inch laptop everybody knew and loved. If it's priced appropriately (read: if the Edu & Gov't discount is priced appropriately) I'll be getting one to replace my Dell Vostro. Almost anything is better than this Dell Vostro.

Finally, some ThinkPad news, and I'm just saddened by the T440. Crunched F-keys, no separate trackpoint buttons, and I'm assuming the speakers are...somewhere?

I don't mind the 1600x900 res at the top end, but I hope Lenovo uses better LCD panels than they have in the past. The premium high-res panel on my T420 was awful; dull, not very bright, and suffered from the screen door effect out the wazoo. I had to dig up the part numbers to get a better panel.

One thing I can say for Apple is that their panels have great color (white is white, gray is gray, etc.) and brightness out of the box.

Do people like these ultrawide monitors over a dual screen approach? With 2 screens, I can easily maximize 2 windows, and ultramon takes care of stretchy things. Do OS's handle a pair of big windows well (haven't used W8), or do you have to stretch and place them "just so"?

I got that trackpad on my Helix, too. It's so incredibly frustrating to use it. But then, the Helix is incredibly frustrating. A wacom pen, but no wacom drivers, and installing them later on breaks the pen: now it only draws in a 128 pixel square in the top-left corner. Neither Windows nor Linux can put the thing reliably to sleep, it'll always wake up and start draining the battery really fast. Putting the pen it its holder switches off the wacom digitizer, which brings with it a whole host of problems. The tablet part is not just heavy but also really, really hot... At least, Ubuntu + Krita makes it a decentish sketching device, but not a patch on my old X61t.

I'm glad this was a development device and not something I paid for myself. It is not a meh device, it is by all means a horrible machine.

Do people like these ultrawide monitors over a dual screen approach? With 2 screens, I can easily maximize 2 windows, and ultramon takes care of stretchy things. Do OS's handle a pair of big windows well (haven't used W8), or do you have to stretch and place them "just so"?

I like the ultra-wide concept, but not at that price for that low of quality.

I prefer one big single monitor and dislike dual screens. The big bar in the middle makes it work poorly as a larger workspace, IMO, you just get *two* workspaces. That has value in and of itself, but it's not for me.

I don't know what's the problem with these OEMs but they're screwing up everything again. Five hours of battery life on an ultrabook with Haswell processor is completely unacceptable. Buying crappy-looking additional (external) battery is again completely unacceptable. I even have a feeling that they're putting smaller batteries in these notebooks.

Why can't they make something that's just decent from every perspective. It's not 2005 any more. We expect them to make decent hardware.

Like other 21:9 monitors it's a piece of junk with just 1080 vertical pixels. I'd be fine with 21:9 monitors if they kept the 1440 or 1600 vertical pixels of 27" and 30" monitors and added horizontal pixels instead of chopping off vertical pixels.

Do people like these ultrawide monitors over a dual screen approach? With 2 screens, I can easily maximize 2 windows, and ultramon takes care of stretchy things. Do OS's handle a pair of big windows well (haven't used W8), or do you have to stretch and place them "just so"?

Have you never even used WIndows 7? If you drag a window to the edge of the screen it will automatically be sized to fit half of the screen on that side.

As someone who has exclusively bought Thinkpad laptops for the past decade, and recommended them to many friends and family, I am generally disappointed in the x230. The touchpad is basically unusable (jittery and imprecise), the drivers for the trackpoint (the main reason for me sticking with Thinkpads) are broken where you can't scroll in Firefox. It has build quality issues (it has little dimples on the screen bezel and when you close the lid, these dimples rub against the plastic base creating indentations.... how does something so moronic like this get designed????). The x240 seems to be more of the same... I saw leaked pictures of the x240 (and the lack of the physical trackpoint buttons) which is why I didn't wait and bought the x230. Its a good machine in most other aspects. Lightweight and fantastic battery life, but unfortunately this looks to be the end of the line for me and Thinkpads

I really, REALLY hope that this silly 21:9 aspect ratio doesn't become a de facto standard. 16:10 is bad enough - and I'm not even a fan of 16:9 except for watching movies.

I'm really confused now, what aspect ratio DO you like? 4:3?

I'm also confused why you think 16:9 is better than 16:10. I don't understand where this "16:9 is better for movies" idea came from seeing as most movies are a lot wider than 16:9, so 16:10 will add a non-noticeable amount of extra letterboxing. As for trying to play 16:9 content on a 16:10 display, it's 60 pixels of letterboxing on each end, which hardly seems like a big deal, whereas 120 vertical pixels IS a big deal if you're working with spreadsheets or text documents.

Do people like these ultrawide monitors over a dual screen approach? With 2 screens, I can easily maximize 2 windows, and ultramon takes care of stretchy things. Do OS's handle a pair of big windows well (haven't used W8), or do you have to stretch and place them "just so"?

Bars in the middle are terrible ergonomics with dual screens. Better to use one giant monitor. or three. That said, this monitor doesn't seem to be a great solution.

Do people like these ultrawide monitors over a dual screen approach? With 2 screens, I can easily maximize 2 windows, and ultramon takes care of stretchy things. Do OS's handle a pair of big windows well (haven't used W8), or do you have to stretch and place them "just so"?

I haven't tried one, but I'd like to. On a normal dual-monitor setup it's normally a problem to fit 3 windows side by side, not least because of the black bars. An ultra-wide single-monitor setup gives a lot more flexibility to fit one, two or three windows side by side.

It's almost like it's meant to replace two 20" monitors that are side-by-side.

At first glance, I'd probably prefer my current dual-monitor setup. But ideally I'd like to see the OS natively support this type of super-wide monitor in a 'dual-display, single-device' mode.

Imagine being able use this 1 device in the same manner you use dual monitors. Having seamless lines across both sides of the display would be preferable (contrast with the edges of a dual device today); stretch a single Application across the full display if needed, but also split the display in half by application for everything else.

I saw elsewhere that the 29" monitor included KVM switch functionality, camera, speakers, etc. I don't care for the camera but the KVM would be nice. I'd like to move to a larger monitor, but it would mean switching to DisplayPort, replacing the video card in one computer, and buying a DisplayPort-capable KVM. (Plus Windows 7 and 8 don't handle DisplayPort and HDMI monitor unplugging very well.)

What is Lenovo doing with their keyboards? Through work, I've gone from T60 to T61, T510, T520, T530. Through the T520, the keyboard layout was largely consistent.

Then they changed the layout on the 530, for what I can see is no good reason. Moving the 'delete' key from the left side of the group to the right was pure genius, as it totally destroys any muscle memory you may have built up. If that wasn't enough, they changed the square arrangement of home/end/page up/page down, so that home/end are left/right adjacent, and the page up/page down are now by the cursor keys at the bottom. So if you want to navigate quickly through something using cursor keys, you have to move your hand up and down the keyboard. My guess is they don't even use their own products...

What is Lenovo doing with their keyboards? Through work, I've gone from T60 to T61, T510, T520, T530. Through the T520, the keyboard layout was largely consistent.

Then they changed the layout on the 530, for what I can see is no good reason. Moving the 'delete' key from the left side of the group to the right was pure genius, as it totally destroys any muscle memory you may have built up. If that wasn't enough, they changed the square arrangement of home/end/page up/page down, so that home/end are left/right adjacent, and the page up/page down are now by the cursor keys at the bottom. So if you want to navigate quickly through something using cursor keys, you have to move your hand up and down the keyboard. My guess is they don't even use their own products...

What is Lenovo doing with their keyboards? Through work, I've gone from T60 to T61, T510, T520, T530. Through the T520, the keyboard layout was largely consistent.

Then they changed the layout on the 530, for what I can see is no good reason. Moving the 'delete' key from the left side of the group to the right was pure genius, as it totally destroys any muscle memory you may have built up. If that wasn't enough, they changed the square arrangement of home/end/page up/page down, so that home/end are left/right adjacent, and the page up/page down are now by the cursor keys at the bottom. So if you want to navigate quickly through something using cursor keys, you have to move your hand up and down the keyboard. My guess is they don't even use their own products...

Yeah, the T4xx went through the same evolution. They were phasing out the 420s when I first bought in, but I wanted the newer processor, so I went with the 430. Here's to hoping that someone will provide the keyboard the users wants, if Lenovo won't do it for us.

It's almost like it's meant to replace two 20" monitors that are side-by-side.

At first glance, I'd probably prefer my current dual-monitor setup. But ideally I'd like to see the OS natively support this type of super-wide monitor in a 'dual-display, single-device' mode.

Imagine being able use this 1 device in the same manner you use dual monitors. Having seamless lines across both sides of the display would be preferable (contrast with the edges of a dual device today); stretch a single Application across the full display if needed, but also split the display in half by application for everything else.

Pardon my ignorance, but it there some technical reason why monitors have to have bezels?

I want a phone or tablet to have a bezel to deal with my hands being there, but for a monitor, once it's in place, having them seamlessly (or near seamlessly) butt together would be much better.

I don't care about the lack of buttons on the trackpoint since I use a mouse with my laptop 95% of the time. However, I can see why those who use the trackpoint more often would be upset by this new change, and it doesn't look as ergonomic as the old-school trackpoint.

As for the keyboard, I agree, the layout is crap. If they kept the old layout but with the new chiclet-style keys, it would be one of the finest laptop keyboards known to man, but damn, why did they have to change it up? I mean, I don't expect other manufacturers to be quite as good in the keyboard layout department, but IBM/Lenovo had the perfect layout that didn't need any changing.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.